The only meaningful counterweight to the NCAA system’s exploitative dynamics is unionization: the empowerment of athletes to defend their own interests as a collective
At times it can feel like it is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of exploitation, abuse and harm in the world of US college sport. This is after all an athletic system that produces billions of dollars of revenue for universities and the NCAA and yet denies the workers who generate it a basic wage, the ability to engage in compensatory promotional work and the equivalent educational experience enjoyed by their non-sporting peers, even as it tolerates physical, sexual and emotional abuse and the subjection of its participants to extreme physical harm. And we haven’t even mentioned the plantation dynamics.
“We are at the mercy of our respective schools, they get to set the rules and treat us however they want and the worst consequence is some bad press, but the machine keeps on going,” a Pac-12 football player told the Guardian. “The power dynamics between player and coaches/schools is so off balance, guys were scared to speak up and advocate for themselves in the middle of a pandemic. The NCAA has shown they don’t give a fuck about us, it’s all about protecting the bottom line and making money.”
There’s never been a better moment for college athletes to tap into the intersection of the movement for economic justice, Black Lives Matter and the movement for free tuition and student debt cancellation.
Nathan Kalman-Lamb, Derek Silva, and Johanna Mellis are co-hosts of The End Of Sport podcast.
